1. Acceptance of These Terms

By accessing Roots Archive, creating an account, uploading content, building a family tree, using external storage features, or inviting collaborators, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service and our Privacy Policy.

If you do not agree with these terms, you should not use the platform. Continued use of the platform after updates to these terms means that you accept the updated terms.

2. The Permanence and Free Core Features Commitment

We recognize the profound importance of the work you do here. Roots Archive is built around the idea that family history should be preserved respectfully and not treated as a hostage behind future forced paywalls.

We intend to keep the core family tree building features provided to users upon registration available without forced subscription requirements. However, advanced features, optional services, external storage costs, premium tools, large storage usage, custom domains, integrations, or future high-cost infrastructure features may be subject to limits, fees, quotas, or separate terms.

3. User Accounts and Security

You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account.

• You must provide accurate registration information.
• You must keep your password secure and not share access with unauthorized persons.
• You must notify the site owner if you suspect unauthorized access, credential exposure, or misuse of your account.
• You are responsible for ensuring that invited collaborators are trusted and have appropriate permission to view or edit family records.
• You may not attempt to access another user’s archive, account, files, storage zone, or private records without permission.

4. User Conduct and Responsibilities

Roots Archive is a dedicated tool for genealogical, family, archival, and historical documentation. You agree to use the platform respectfully and lawfully.

• You will not upload, share, or store illegal, abusive, intentionally malicious, exploitative, harassing, defamatory, fraudulent, or harmful content.
• You will not upload malware, executable threats, phishing material, spyware, or files designed to compromise the platform or other users.
• You will respect the privacy of living individuals and seek appropriate consent before sharing personal information, photographs, private documents, or sensitive family details through publicly accessible links.
• You will not impersonate another person, misrepresent your relationship to a family tree, or intentionally corrupt historical records.
• You will not use the platform to publish doxxing material, private identity documents, financial records, medical records, or other sensitive data without lawful authority and appropriate consent.
• You will not attempt to bypass quotas, upload limits, account restrictions, access controls, storage restrictions, or security protections.

5. Family Records, Living Persons, and Sensitive Content

Family trees may include information about living relatives, minors, deceased persons, private family matters, and sensitive historical events. You are responsible for deciding what is appropriate to add, publish, invite others to view, or make publicly accessible.

You agree to use reasonable care when entering information about living persons, children, private family disputes, adoption, lineage uncertainty, medical history, identity records, addresses, or other sensitive details.

Roots Archive may remove or restrict access to content if it appears to violate privacy, safety, legal rights, or these terms.

6. Intellectual Property Rights

We respect the ownership of your history. Our intellectual property policy is straightforward.

• Your Content: You retain your rights to photographs, documents, stories, notes, records, and text you upload or create. You grant Roots Archive a limited, non-exclusive, revocable license to host, process, format, display, transmit, and technically manage your content only as needed to provide the platform.
• Permission to Upload: You confirm that you own the content you upload or have permission to upload and display it. You are responsible for copyright, privacy, and consent issues related to your uploaded content.
• Our Platform: The Roots Archive design, software, interface, layout, logo, styling, custom tools, and platform code are owned by the site owner or relevant rights holders. You may not copy, reverse-engineer, resell, clone, redistribute, or exploit the platform code or design without written permission.
• Feedback: If you provide suggestions, feature ideas, bug reports, or feedback, Roots Archive may use them to improve the platform without owing compensation, while still respecting your private data.

7. Bunny.net Storage and External Media Storage

Roots Archive may use Bunny.net Storage or related Bunny.net services to store or deliver user media externally instead of storing all files directly inside WordPress. This helps improve scalability, performance, and storage management.

7.1 Native Provided Bunny.net Storage

The platform may provide a native site-managed Bunny.net storage option. In this mode, the site owner may create, assign, manage, sync, or remove local assignments for Bunny.net Storage Zones associated with user accounts.

Native provided Bunny.net storage may be automatically provisioned when you register, open the Bunny.net Storage page, or use features that require external storage. The platform may record storage zone names, zone IDs, region codes, usage, quotas, file counts, credentials, public base URLs, and technical metadata.

7.2 User-Owned Bunny.net Storage

If you prefer additional privacy control, you may choose to use your own Bunny.net storage credentials instead of the native provided account. In this mode, you are responsible for providing accurate Bunny.net Storage Zone details and maintaining your Bunny.net account.

When using your own Bunny.net storage, you should provide a Bunny.net Storage Zone Password or AccessKey for the specific zone you want Roots Archive to use. You should not enter your main Bunny.net Account API Key unless you fully understand the risks.

7.3 Responsibility for User-Owned Credentials

If you use your own Bunny.net storage, you are responsible for:

• Creating and maintaining your Bunny.net account.
• Entering correct Storage Zone Name, AccessKey, endpoint, region, and public URL settings.
• Rotating, revoking, or regenerating your Bunny.net keys if they are exposed or no longer trusted.
• Managing Bunny.net billing, quotas, limits, account suspension, CDN configuration, and storage deletion.
• Ensuring that your Bunny.net Pull Zone, CDN, token authentication, cache, and privacy settings match your intended privacy level.

7.4 Public CDN Links

Bunny.net files may be delivered through Pull Zones, CDN links, custom domains, or public URLs. If public delivery is enabled, anyone with the URL may be able to view the file unless additional access controls are configured.

You agree not to upload highly sensitive, private, identity-related, legal, financial, medical, copyrighted, or confidential files unless you understand how your storage and public links are configured.

7.5 Remote Deletion and Storage Zone Removal

Deleting a local WordPress record, removing a Bunny.net assignment, or switching storage source does not always delete the remote file, folder, Bunny.net object, Pull Zone, cache, or Storage Zone. Remote deletion may require a separate API operation or manual deletion from Bunny.net.

8. Uploads, Files, Quotas, and Storage Limits

Roots Archive may enforce file type limits, file size limits, storage quotas, usage restrictions, and upload rules. These limits may differ between native provided storage and user-owned Bunny.net storage.

• Native provided storage may be limited by a quota set by the site owner.
• User-owned Bunny.net storage is subject to the user’s own Bunny.net account limits, configuration, and billing status.
• The platform may reject files that exceed size limits, appear unsafe, violate policy, or are not supported.
• Upload records, metadata, file paths, file names, MIME types, public URLs, and usage details may be stored for technical management and troubleshooting.
• The site owner may remove abusive, unsafe, unlawful, or policy-violating content.

9. Privacy and Administrator Access

The site owner states a strong moral commitment to privacy and intends to keep user records, family data, storage details, and uploaded content private. Roots Archive is not built to sell or exploit your family history.

However, for technical operation, support, storage management, security, abuse prevention, and troubleshooting, administrators may technically be able to access certain account data, storage metadata, and credentials stored in the platform.

By using the platform, you understand that technical access may exist even when the site owner’s intention and policy are to preserve privacy and avoid unnecessary access.

10. Backups, Caches, and Data Retention

Roots Archive may use backups, logs, caches, CDN systems, database records, and third-party infrastructure. Deleting content from the visible platform may not immediately remove all copies from backups, temporary logs, caches, CDN nodes, or external storage providers.

• Deleted records may remain in backups until backup rotation expires.
• CDN caches may continue to serve files temporarily after origin deletion.
• Bunny.net files may remain in user-owned storage until the user deletes them directly or remote deletion is successfully performed.
• Security logs may be retained for abuse prevention, platform integrity, and investigation.

11. Account Termination and Suspension

You may request termination of your account or delete your account through available dashboard tools where supported. Upon termination, Roots Archive will take reasonable steps to remove your active account data from the platform.

Roots Archive may suspend, restrict, or terminate accounts that violate these terms, misuse storage, upload illegal or harmful content, attempt unauthorized access, abuse other users, or threaten the security or integrity of the platform.

Account termination does not necessarily delete files stored in user-owned Bunny.net accounts. If you use your own Bunny.net storage, you remain responsible for deleting files directly from Bunny.net if desired.

12. Third-Party Services

Roots Archive may rely on third-party providers for hosting, storage, email, security, analytics, CDN delivery, or other technical functions. Bunny.net may be used for external storage and file delivery.

Your use of third-party services through Roots Archive may also be subject to those providers’ own terms, policies, limits, outages, billing rules, and technical restrictions.

Roots Archive is not responsible for failures, outages, policy changes, suspensions, billing issues, or data loss caused by third-party providers outside our reasonable control.

13. No Guarantee of Historical Accuracy

Roots Archive provides tools for organizing and preserving family history, but it does not verify the accuracy, completeness, legality, or truthfulness of user-submitted genealogical data.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you enter and for resolving disputes between relatives, collaborators, or other contributors.

14. Availability, Changes, and Maintenance

We aim to keep Roots Archive reliable and available, but the platform may experience downtime, updates, maintenance, bugs, hosting issues, third-party provider interruptions, or changes in features.

We may modify, improve, limit, suspend, or remove features when needed for security, performance, legal compliance, cost control, or platform development.

15. Limitation of Liability

Roots Archive is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. While we aim to use responsible security, storage, and backup practices, no online platform can guarantee perfect availability, permanent preservation, absolute security, or complete protection against data loss.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Roots Archive and its owner shall not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, punitive, or accidental damages, including loss of data, loss of files, loss of family records, credential misuse, Bunny.net storage failure, CDN exposure, third-party outage, unauthorized access, or circumstances beyond reasonable control.

Users are strongly encouraged to keep independent local backups of important family documents, high-resolution media, exported family trees, and Bunny.net-stored files.

16. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold Roots Archive and its owner harmless from claims, losses, liabilities, damages, expenses, or legal disputes arising from your uploaded content, misuse of the platform, violation of these terms, infringement of third-party rights, unlawful content, misuse of Bunny.net credentials, or storage configuration choices.

17. Updates to These Terms

Roots Archive may update these Terms of Service as the platform evolves, including changes related to Bunny.net storage, account controls, privacy tools, paid features, security measures, or external integrations.

We will make reasonable efforts to notify users of material changes where appropriate. Continued use of the platform after changes take effect means you accept the updated terms.

18. Contact and Support

If you have questions about these terms, storage settings, Bunny.net credentials, account deletion, or privacy concerns, you should contact the Roots Archive site owner through the available support or contact method on the website.